Backstage 22: Beg to Differ
by Aadler
Summary: Some relationships are unconventional … and some are freaking dynamite.
1. Part 1

**Beg to Differ**  
by Aadler  
**Copyright December 2005**

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Disclaimer: Characters from _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.

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Part I

Allie was cranky this evening, which was hardly unusual, but just because Will was accustomed to it didn't mean that he had much patience for it. She was standing naked at the French doors, letting the deepening dusk wash in on her, and he suspected that she was waiting for him to admonish her for carelessness and order her to step back, lest she be spotted by someone on the street. At least, that was how this scene had played out in the past, though it had been some time since the last such incident. He didn't say anything, just lay watching her. They were going to have a knock-down drag-out tonight, he could see that already, and he wasn't eager to get on with it; too soon, and she might have time to build up another head of steam before the night was over, and he didn't have the energy to deal with that.

Besides, the mood she was in, he was just glad she wasn't standing out on the balcony cursing the traffic.

At last she looked back to him, clearly annoyed at him for not giving her the excuse she wanted, and said, "You gonna lie there forever, Little Willy? We're wasting moonlight; you don't get your British backside in gear, our boy's liable to skip on us."

Will sighed, rolled to the edge of the bed, and reached for his trousers. Ah, good, at least she hadn't ripped them this time. "The one we're after is a late riser," he pointed out. "We don't know where he'll hunt, or that's where we'd be, but we do know where he's to meet his chums. As for his doing a runner, that's more likely if we call too much attention to ourselves. Which, I may point out, you very much tend to do."

"You didn't rope me into this blood-feud of yours 'cause I play nice at parties." Allie moved to the end of the bed, but showed no inclination to begin gathering her own clothes. "You wanted somebody to kill things for you, and that's me. I never said I'd be polite about it. In fact, I don't remember saying anything at all about it, because … oh, yeah, that's right, _I wasn't asked."_

Her anger was almost a living presence between them, not least because it was impotent. Physically she could have broken him in an instant, but he had prudently erected safeguards well in advance. He was the dominant here, and she hated being dominated, and that was a frustration that would continue until his mission had been accomplished.

Assuming, of course, that Allie didn't bollix the whole business with impatience, temper, or sheer love of mayhem. She wasn't stupid, was Allie, but she did a lot of stupid things, and Will had found it necessary to devote considerable attention to cleaning up behind her.

As he was doing now. He stopped with one shoe on and regarded the torn laces on the other, where she had been in too great a hurry to get him undressed. "I think I'll wear boots tonight," he said. Then he looked to the bitter female still glowering at him and added, "So I'm to take it, then, that you'd rather we bungle our operations, so you can stay in servitude to me for even longer? I don't think either of us wants that."

"Is that supposed to be more of your famous British understatement?" she challenged him. "Darn tootin' I don't want to be stuck with you any longer than I have to. I'm just saying, even if this partnership wasn't my idea, there's a division of labor going here. Yours is books. Mine is entrails. So let's get to where I can do what I'm good at."

Will stood and pulled on a light coat, and favored her with an ironic eyebrow. "For all your grousing, we can see that I'm now fully clothed and ready to go, and you're not."

Allie crossed to the wardrobe in three quick steps, jerked something from the first hanger her hand touched — a denim minidress — and pulled it on over her head. "I'm dressed," she announced.

It didn't appear she was going to bother with underwear, but then that was something of a hit-or-miss proposition with her at the best of times. "Right," Will said. "So you'll be going on the hunt barefoot, then?"

She looked around, kicked together the sandals she had flung away earlier, and stepped into them. "Dressed," she repeated. "Want to kill. Kill now?"

Will shook his head. "You're bloody incorrigible."

"I love it when you talk dirty," Allie said, falling in behind him as he started for the door. "Oh, wait, no I don't. And have I mentioned that you're totally lame in bed?"

"Do okay when I'm not having to grapple with a female gorilla," he shot back.

"Bitch, bitch, bitch," Allie said.

"Watcher, scholar, widower," Will replied. "Now that we've introduced ourselves —"

The bickering continued into the hallway, and out into the street, and well beyond.

~ – ~ – ~

He would have preferred not to attract attention, but the simple truth was that they were such a striking pair (he could recognize the cold fact without being in danger of succumbing to vanity) that making themselves unobtrusive was more effort than it was worth. He was slim elegance, refined features framed by arched eyebrows and tousled sandy hair; she was electric animal vitality, dark where he was fair, inches taller than he was even when she didn't wear heels, and looking always as if she had just stepped away from a strenuous tennis match or a rousing session between the sheets. Eyes followed them wherever they went … and even if he could have contrived to make them blend in visually, the obstreperousness of Allie's behavior would have overridden that in seconds.

Case in point: "Since we won't be ripping anybody apart for the next coupla hours," Allie said, "how's about we stop at a beer garden and knock back a few?"

"You don't really enjoy drinking," Will observed curtly. "Not beer, anyhow. You get sullen and start insulting people."

"Places we go to, insulting is pretty much called for," Allie said. "Besides, it was you started that last brawl."

"Didn't like his manners," Will said. "Or his face."

"Bet he likes it even less now." Allie indicated their surroundings with a sweep of her arm. "C'mon, _Germany._ Chocolate, cuckoo clocks, beer. How can I show my face back home if I pass through here without sampling the beer?"

"And where exactly would you be showing your face, anyhow?" Will pointed out. "Everybody who knows you thinks you're dead. Which, not to put too fine a point on it …"

"Don't start that again," Allie said. "You wanted me for what I am, so don't go ragging on me for being it."

"If we're going to harp at each other all the time," Will said, "I have to use the ammunition available. You never hesitate to bring up the deficiencies in _my_ nature."

"That's different."

"And why so?"

"You're what you are," Allie said. "I'm what you made me."

He couldn't actually dispute that. Hardly more than literate, even by the deplorable standards of American education, Allie could nonetheless go straight for the jugular in an argument as unerringly as she did in battle. Not acknowledging his defeat, Will acted on it all the same. "We'll stop at one of the pubs with a sidewalk section," he conceded. "I'm not about to trust you indoors."

They found an open table, and in less than a minute a young woman was there to wait on them. Will began to place an order for the two of them, but Allie immediately interrupted, speaking in a fast, bizarre gabble that had the waitress smiling and nodding. When she withdrew, Will asked, "Are you bent on perpetuating the Ugly American stereotype?"

"Beats the stereotype you've got going," Allie retorted. "You're not giving a speech at the Reichstag, lover-boy. If I waited for you to get it all sorted out in perfect German grammar, they'd be locking the place down by the time you finished. The night is young, and I'm not getting any older, and, hey, _beer."_

It would be less annoying if it weren't true; Will felt (with, he thought, some justification) that precision was a necessary component of communication, but Allie, jumping straight in and spouting whatever sounded close enough to her, almost always made herself understood more quickly than he could. "Do you even know what you said to that girl?"

Allie gave him a careless grin. "As I recall, it was something like, 'Couple of beers for me and the professor, sweetie. And, hey, that top looks really good on you.' "

Will closed his eyes. " 'Top,' " he repeated. "I assume you meant her blouse? The 'top' you used refers to an Alpine summit." He regarded Allie with grim resignation. "You just complimented her on her mountain peaks."

"Oh." Allie thought about it. "Well, they were nice, too."

"Bloody hell." Will shook his head. "I never can decide whether you actually have lesbian tendencies, or if you think it would make me uncomfortable to believe you do."

Allie _chuff!_ed at the idea. "For that, you'd have to think I think you care what I think."

He shook his head again, hard. "Was there an actual sentence in any of that?"

The waitress returned just then with two beers, and Allie cheerfully repeated her prior compliment. The girl smiled, amused, and left them to their drinks. Will found his mood not a whit improved by the smirk Allie aimed at him.

Wait a moment, now _he_ was brassed off and she was on top of the world. They'd switched places, and just when had that happened? As soon as he posed himself the question, Will knew the answer: it was when she first addressed the waitress in that appalling _patois_. The moment she got under his skin — and knew she had done so — her demeanor had improved as his declined. No, _because_ his declined. They were quite the pair, they were.

"Penny for 'em," Allie said. "Except, no, wait, definitely not worth a penny. Does anybody ever say, 'A pfennig for your thoughts'?"

"Everyone's using euros now," Will told her. "And those have got more heft to 'em than those anemic dollars of yours. Not that you actually have any dollars to your name."

"And whose idea was that, exactly?" Allie returned, smiling in the way that usually heralded bloodshed. "Why, it'd have to be the oh-so-self-righteous Watcher guy, keeping the rambunctious female in her place by controlling the purse-strings. You're right, all I have is the clothes on my back." She leaned toward him over the table. _"Only_ on my back, and there's this really stimulating breeze whistling up my dress. Just in case you're interested."

"I'm not, actually." Will eased his chair back a bit. "But I think those gentlemen across the street might be."

"Really?" She knew better than to look around, but the grin she gave him was lit with real pleasure. "White hats, or black? Please tell me black."

"I doubt they'll wait to show us credentials," Will said. He laid enough euros on the table to cover their drinks, then added more for a tip. "If they try to kill us both, I'd say probably black. If they only want to kill you … well, that'd put them right in with the rest of the world, wouldn't it?"

"Don't hate me because I'm beautiful," Allie said as they rose from the table and started down the brick-paved street. "Hate me because I just tied your lungs around your neck in a sassy little bow."

The men who had been watching trailed them at a polite distance. That was convenient, but said nothing as to their nature. America was a young country, and demons loved it, operating with a surprising brazenness there. In Europe, however, they were usually far more discreet; there were too many racial memories, too many old stories that, while no longer believed, hadn't been forgotten. An open incident might get people thinking, and it was easier all around if the prey remained largely oblivious to the predators. These four, human or not, were awaiting an opportunity to catch him and Allie away from the public eye.

Will obliged them, picking a suitable alley and stepping into it. Best tactics would have been to wait at the alley mouth and attack as soon as they rounded the corner … but he needed to know, and so as soon as he turned out of their sight he began to run, lightly and silently. He wasn't trying to get away, but he wanted distance, and about halfway down he stopped and waited.

When they appeared at the alley mouth there were now six of them, and his heart sank for a moment (greater numbers, working together, argued for their being human); but then the one leading, seeing Will standing alone, called out, "Where is she? Where's the turncoat?"

Well, that tore it.

Even in May, the night weather was cool enough to justify the thigh-length coat Will had donned (Allie looked ridiculous in a minidress and sandals, but no one expected much from a dizzy American girl), and he'd had no trouble concealing the ice-axe beneath it. He already had hold of it when they spoke, but even so Allie was on them before he could pull it out, dropping from above, she'd gone skittering up the wall while he ran down the narrow passage to draw them in. He charged now with a cry of warning: _too soon,_ their words had shown them to be villains but they might still be human, except Allie wasn't particular about the distinction between demons and those who aided them —

Not a problem this time, some of them morphed and a few actually burst out of their skins with the speed of transformation, Allie had broken two necks by the time he reached them and she tore out the windpipe of a third as he buried the ice-axe in a misshapen skull. These were Camber-Pyclet demons, most of the clans had assimilated into human culture but there were always those who hungered for the Good Old Days. Not that strong in demon terms, they were nonetheless resilient and tenacious, the one he had struck was still trying to fight him with five inches of steel in its brain.

Waste of time. Even with all he had seen, experienced, even _knowing,_ it was still easy to accept surface appearance and forget just what Allie was; but she was in her element now, howling and slaughtering with joyous abandon, a lethal whirl of savagery and carnage. Ichor spattered his face, screams echoed around him, and she had finished with the last while he was still trying to wrench his weapon free. She shot him a sneer, pushed him out of the way, and smashed the sixth one's head against the wall with a force that shattered it like an egg. "You should be able to get it out now," she observed.

He wasn't about to express gratitude. "Do the words 'target discrimination' have no bloody meaning to you at all?" he demanded of her.

"In grade school they taught me discrimination was a _bad_ thing," Allie said dismissively. "Me, I'm equal opportunity. And hey, look around, they're all equally dead."

"They might have been human," he insisted. "You attacked before you knew. Bad enough my people think you're a monster, you don't need to be _proving_ it to them —"

"Your people can bite my ass, Watcher-man." Her voice was flat and deadly. "They're gonna try and kill me no matter what I do, so I plan to party hearty while I can. And don't act like you're any better, you hate me as much as they do. More, probably, 'cause for you it's personal."

That brought him short. "No," he said, shaking his head. "I don't hate you. I know that you —"

"You know you _shouldn't_ hate me," she broke in. "But you still do. Being all conflicted about it doesn't change it." There was no mirth behind the familiar grin. "Me, I'm not a bit conflicted. Where you and me are concerned, I'm all about the hate."

The fury she carried was nothing new to him. He needed it, had fed it for his own purposes … but now, so close to the completion of his plans, he found himself drawing back from the force that made it possible. "We need to get away from here," he said, shaking himself into focus. "Someone may have heard the fight, we need —"

"You know what I need," she said, interrupting him for the third time in less than a minute.

Spoken in a different tone, it would have had a different import, but Will was in no doubt as to what she meant. "Here?" he protested. _"Now?_ Are you stark raving? We're at the scene of a massacre!"

"Tough noodles, Willy." Allie took hold of the lapels of his coat, pulled him to her. "You're the one who set the ground rules. You needed muscle, I provided it. Now it's your turn to provide what I need."

"We couldn't go back to our rooms?" he said plaintively, knowing it was no use.

"That'd take too long." Her arms were steel. "You're on deck, buster. Stand and deliver."

So he did. He didn't even have to lift the dress, it was so short it rode up automatically when she wrapped her legs around him, and the absence of underclothing, which before had seemed taunting or reckless, now proved to be a matter of admirable forethought. She had his trousers open even as he bore her back against the brick wall, and he thrust into her with a brutal roughness he would never have used with any other lover but that she insisted upon.

Keyed up by the violence just past, she reached her release almost immediately. This was usually the case, but to his surprise (she'd already used him ruinously earlier in the day), Will found himself responding as well. _Just close your eyes and think of England,_ an inner voice mocked, and she felt him quickening, pulled his head onto her shoulder and turned it to the side. She never pretended to be other than what she was — in truth, she never let him forget it — but neither would she allow him to see when her face came out.

"I hate you," she was sobbing as he rocked against her, trembling at the edge of culmination. "Oh, God, I hate you so much." Then her teeth pierced his throat, and he gave her the rest of what she needed.


	2. Part 2

Part II

They wound up going back to the rooms after all, as Allie's clothes and hair were so clotted with Camber-Pyclet gore that she had to do a complete makeover. Except for a few splashes on his coat, which didn't show too badly on the dark fabric, Will was able to put himself back to sorts by sponging his face clean, but Allie flung the fouled minidress off the balcony and into the street, and then spent twenty minutes in the shower. Once satisfied there, she donned jeans and a t-shirt, and plaited her still-damp hair into a thick single braid. Hiking boots and a leather jacket to complete the ensemble, and she was impatient to be on the move again.

Some of her jumpiness sprang from her basic temperament, but not all; the sex-charged feeding had her humming with energy, and she would be more than normally touchy until the first surge wore off. "We shouldn't be going back out yet," Will cautioned her. "If that bunch knew who we were, it means the word about us has spread this far already. We don't want to attract notice; Gutrick might take alarm and change his schedule, and I don't fancy trying to work out which border he fled across this time."

Allie scoffed. "That's what worries you, huh? Not the nagging little thought that they might have heard about us because _there's a Watcher wet-works team_ sniffing around our back-trail? But no, you'd be way too genteel to mention anything like that."

"You could be right," Will said. "They may very well have tracked us more quickly than expected. But there's no knowing just now, and no avoiding it without abandoning our own hunt. I'm not willing to do that, even if you were, which I strongly doubt."

"Cut and run when we're this close?" Allie's face twisted with disgust. "Not gonna be happening. But that doesn't mean I want to tuck into a hole and pull it in after us. Sure, I'm down with the whole blood-vengeance deal, but you've gotta let me have _some_ fun now and then."

"I'd say you've had more than a bit so far tonight," Will observed coolly.

Her smile was scornful. "Got a pretty high opinion of yourself, don't you?"

"I don't, actually," Will said. "I meant the killing."

"Yeah, that part was pretty good." Allie sighed. "You'd think your former buddies in the Tweed Brigade would untwist their panties a little, considering the chunk we've been cutting out of the demon underworld."

"Ah, but they're not as broad-minded as we are," Will replied.

He had said it deadpan, hoping to sidestep the subject with a turn of humor, but he could see from her expression that she knew they were skirting a delicate area, see also when she made the decision not to press the issue. "I just hate being cooped up like this," she said, looking away. "I'm going stir-crazy in here."

"I echo the sentiment," Will told her. "But I keep reminding myself we've almost reached an end."

Rather than answer, she settled into an armchair, her back to him, and began to mutter darkly to herself. Will watched her for half a minute; then, deciding she was safe for the moment, he went into the washroom to get a bandage for his throat.

It wasn't really necessary for healing; the wounds had closed already, crusting over, and would be new, pink skin by this time tomorrow. He didn't want anyone spotting the telltale marks, however, so he covered the damage in such a manner that an open collar woudn't give him away. He inspected the result in the mirror … and then, done with that, he studied his face, searching the reflection for signs of the truth.

He didn't look like a monster, but he was one, far more so than Allie; he had made his own decisions, whereas she'd been left with no choice at all. His only consolation was the knowledge that, hard as her current state might be, he hadn't actually made it any worse.

_Keep telling yourself that,_ he thought, and went back out to join her.

Allie had never fed from any human except Will, and the forbidden enchantment he had worked into his blood provided her with nourishment hugely disproportionate to the volume she withdrew. She would dine on animals occasionally — any dog that yapped at her was in peril of never repeating the offense — but essentially her sustenance came solely from him. It bound her to him, gave him the mastery he needed … but she despised herself for what she was, and him for his role in it.

He closed his eyes, seeking the momentary escape from sensation. It didn't work; the turmoil of his thoughts was every bit as demanding and disturbing as the situation into which he had placed the two of them. Perception could be deceptive; he had acquired Allie barely six months ago, but now it was as if their time together comprised the whole of his existence, as if there had never been any _other_ reality …

No, that wasn't true at all.

His mind shied away from the memory, but it was always there: horror, and helplessness, and despair, and the soul-curdling hatred for the creatures who had torn away from him the only life that mattered —

Enough of this. He had made the decision long ago; there was no unmaking it, and no point in faltering just short of the goal for which he had already paid a willing price. He found a chair of his own and sat back; for however long Allie could force herself to stay still, he would wait and be glad for the quiet.

Shame he couldn't silence his conscience as well, scabbed-over though it might be.

~ – ~ – ~

He had known almost from the first that the Council of Watchers would be of no help to him. To be sure, many of them had taken it as a personal affront that one of their own should be so shatteringly bereaved. All evidence, however, had indicated that this was a random incident, not a deliberate attack on the Watchers themselves, and from the same evidence it was clear that the vampires involved had been a typical band of wandering marauders. No sinister figures of towering myth, just ordinary predators, seeing him and his dearest as no more than targets of opportunity. They had vanished into the ranks of their kind, unremarkable and indistinguishable and not remotely of sufficient importance, in the Council's eyes, to be worth the effort of finding and dispatching them.

Will had declined to adopt this complacent, impersonal perspective.

His wife had informed him of her pregnancy only two days before. She had declined wine at the restaurant, insisted that they be seated well away from any smokers, minor but emphatic precautions that — viewed in hindsight — were rendered obscene by the knowledge that her life wouldn't outlast the evening. And the things that fell on them in the dark between street and door hadn't simply been seeking prey; they understood cruelty, killing her slowly in front of him and laughing at his ineffectual screams, leaving him finally with wrenched shoulders but no other injury, to burn forever in the crucible of knowing his failure.

Perhaps they had wanted to see if he would go insane.

Perhaps he had.

Scorning the Council, he had begun his own search. He had needed information, and not been fastidious as to how it was purchased, whether by means of family wealth that was meaningless to him now, or institutional secrets he no longer felt any obligation to protect. He had made one devil's bargain after another, indifferent to the price exacted, and in return he had acquired names and descriptions.

There had been seven of them. He had killed one, after months of hunting … and then spent eleven weeks in hospital, for a cornered vampire did not expire quietly. This had convinced him to alter his approach. He had no fear of death — life meant nothing to him now — but it was unthinkable that he might die while any of his wife's killers still walked the earth. He needed something more than his own skills and efforts; he needed an edge, an advantage.

A weapon.

The ideal weapon would have been a Slayer. This was denied him, but it turned his attention to alternative possibilities. He made more unconscionable bargains, and traveled to one of the places where mystical forces lay in the proper balance, and prepared himself with the proper desecrations, and waited at the foot of a suitable grave. And Allie came ravening up out of the unquiet ground, eyes blazing amber and empty of anything but hunger, and he went unresisting to her embrace. She tore into him and drank greedily … and, as his magicked blood seared through her, became his thrall beyond hope of rebellion.

Only, there had been more to it than that.

~ – ~ – ~

"You ever notice we're reading off different pages most of the time?" Allie asked abruptly.

Though jerked from reverie, Will wasn't startled; the real wonder was that she'd sat quiet for so long. "Hard to miss that we don't agree on much," he said.

Allie waved it away. "I don't mean differences in personality. For that, you'd need to actually _have_ a personality. But I'm not sure you're really seeing that this whole business doesn't mean to me what it does to you."

For that moment, Will's voice might have come from a dead throat. "You couldn't possibly imagine what it means to me."

"And just how does that not make my point?" She shook her head. "Look at it from my side of the quilt, hotshot. You don't really care what happens to you once this is all over, but I don't even _know_ what'll happen to me."

Will shrugged. "We part ways, like I promised you from the start. You haven't been shy about chafing under my service; you'll be free, and you can do whatever you like."

Allie made a knock-knock motion in the general direction of his head. "Hel_-lo?_ Anybody home? Look, there's obsessed and then there's dense, and you're turning dense into a whole new art form here."

Little as he wished to do so, it seemed he must ask. "What do you mean?"

"Jeez, dim-bulb, _think_ about it. We've been together my whole blood-gulping unlife. What happens if we go different directions? Does reception fade if we get too far apart? Or even if it holds, what happens to me if something happens to you?"

Will frowned. "I'd say you're reaching. The link allows me to command you, but there's nothing to suggest your continued existence is tied to mine. Once I release you, I see no reason you shouldn't be able to function with full autonomy …"

He stopped; Allie was staring at him with a peculiar flatness, as if trying to convince herself that what she was looking at could actually exist. "No way you could be that dumb," she said at last. "So I guess I have to believe you really are that self-centered. Congratulations, Willy-boy, you just exceeded my lowest expectations."

Try as he might, he couldn't divine her meaning. "I'm afraid you'll have to explain," he said.

Her lips twisted with contempt. "Do I have to draw a map for you? Look, what am I?"

There were different answers he could have provided, but here at least he knew where she was aiming. "You're a vampire," he said.

"Like all the others?" Allie prompted.

"No, not a bit. They're purely creatures of evil, damned from the moment of their inception. There's no spark in them, no soul …"

Understanding hit him even as the last words continued to tumble from his lips.

He had known and intended, when he first took Allie for his own, that part of his essence be tied to hers, for he needed to be able to control this potent tool. Something else had come about, however, something that had worked much to his benefit but caused them both no small measure of consternation. He still didn't know if it was an intrinsic aspect of the spell he had woven into his blood, or a complication arising from proximity to the California Hellmouth, or even the result of some of the less savory practices to which he had lent himself in the preceding months. Regardless of the cause, however, the effect was irrefutable. More than a bond had been forged between him and Allie; somehow, other gates had opened, and to his surprise he had found that his new companion — the scythe he would use to cut through his beloved's killers — was, literally, sharing his soul.

That made Allie signally different from other vampires … but, strictly speaking, she had no soul, either, she had just been borrowing the use of his. Her poor fortune that she'd been saddled with such a shoddy one …

"So," she said again, speaking slowly and distinctly, "what happens to me, if something happens to you?"

The only decent reply he could make to that was, "I don't know."

Allie nodded. "So when we're done with Gutrick, when the last one is gone and it's time for me and you to split company … then, I get to decide if I feel like taking that chance, or if I should find a nice, scenic spot to watch the sun come up."

Will couldn't think of what to say to her. "I'm sorry," was pitifully inadequate, but it was all he could manage.

Allie turned her head slightly, studying him at a slant. "You're telling me you honestly never thought of that before now? Me, I haven't been able to think of anything _else_. If I called you an idiot right now, idiots all over the world would pitch a screaming fit."

"It doesn't matter," Will said. Allie's expression went very still, but he forged on. "Tonight's itinerary is still the same; we'll decide what to do afterward once the time comes." He tried her with an ironic smile. _"If_ that time comes. Who knows, we might both die this evening."

"A girl can hope." Allie's foot was tapping again. "But that still doesn't mean we have to sit here in motel hell till time to go hunting."

His position had been badly weakened, but Will made the attempt anyhow. "If we're seen again …"

"So we'll stay off the streets," Allie said. "Out-of-the-way places, not sitting out in the open wearing a sign that says PLEASE SLAY ME. Because I've gotta tell you, that part was really inspired."

"We'd been in the country less than a day," Will protested, "and in these rooms for the most of that time. I had no reason to expect —"

"Not _caring_ here," Allie interrupted. "I just want to find some quaint little bistro where I can mainline a gallon of vodka and check out the dance scene." She stood and started for the door.

He was already following; he knew when he was defeated, so he might as well play it with style. "Really?" he said. "I had the impression your chosen dance form would always involve a wet t-shirt and a thong."

"What, that's supposed to be a bad thing?" Allie's grin was salacious and mocking. "Look on the bright side: they've got a U.S. Army base close by, maybe you'll get lucky and score with some GI chicks."

Will snorted. "Not bloody likely! If you thought I had an ounce of capacity left, you'd be doing your utmost to wring it out of me right now."

They were at the stairwell by this time, falling into the routine that had served them so steadily. "What do you expect?" Allie was saying. "I've gotta preserve _some_ pride. Your little dom-sub mojo won't let me hurt you any other way, but sex is one place I can still make you holler."

It was a worn substitute for communication, with the real messages hidden in the undertones; but it was what they had, and it would have to suffice.

~ – ~ – ~

Will tended to turn maudlin when he drank too much, that being the reason he avoided imbibing to excess. For all her prideful self-image as a hell-raiser, however, Allie manifested elevated blood-alcohol by getting quieter, her concentration narrowing to a pinpoint. (She could also metabolize, in an hour's time, a load that would render any human comatose, hence his willingness to indulge her just now.) Sitting at a table back from the bar, positioned where her absence of reflection wasn't immediately noticeable, she let her eyes drift over the dozen-odd patrons of the secluded establishment where they had alit at last, and observed conversationally, "It hasn't been all bad."

Will wondered if he had heard her clearly; had that been a not-complaint? "Hmm?" he said.

Allie shrugged it away, looking embarrassed and angry. "Hey, my whole life I never got outside California, okay? I had dreams, I was gonna see Paris with the Guzman twins and hike the Andes and shake my caboose at Carnaval in Rio, but that was always someday. Somewhere deep that I wouldn't admit it, I was scared I'd never do anything interesting before I died." She gave him a flash of teeth that couldn't really be called a smile. "Didn't know the interesting stuff would start _after_ I died. Hanging out with you hasn't been any box of Cracker Jacks, but it hasn't been dull, either."

This was moving in a direction that could open a plethora of snares, but Will felt compelled to respond. "I can attest that you have … lived, more intensely, in the short time I've known you, than many people ever do." He tossed back the remainder of his own drink. "Including myself, before I chanced into my current situation."

Allie regarded him with a sideways twist to her mouth that showed a trace of amusement and a larger dollop of something he couldn't identify. "Trying to bump me off my stride here?" she asked, soft-voiced.

It was easier to inquire than to try and decode that. "Sorry, not following you."

"You're a bastard," she said. "I'm used to you as a bastard. I'm comfortable with it. You start changing that now, acting like something else, it messes with my rhythm. I'm all, 'What the hell? Is he being _nice_ to me? That _bastard!'_ "

"I can see how that might shake your bearings," he said. "Would it help if I stubbed out a few cigarettes on your hand?"

"It'd fit the pattern, at least." She looked away. "Did you ever have any plans for after this was over? I mean, _anything?_ Or is this all you've got left?"

He considered it; not because he had any doubt, but to be sure no new issues had appeared. None had. "I'm not suicidal," he told her. "I have no desire to die. But … I don't have any other desires, either." He made a vague gesture. "Gutrick is the only one left. Finding him, putting him down at last, that matters to me. Nothing else does. Or rather, anything that did was taken from me long ago."

"Well, just as a favor to me, could you _try_ to find a little more motivation than that?" Her mood, always mercurial, had flitted back to black anger. "Jeez, cry me a river! All you gotta worry about is the big dirt-nap, but I tried that already, and it didn't take, and now I'm wondering when I'll suddenly get the snazzy notion to stroll into a hospital nursery and start snacking down on the newborns." That fixed his attention on her, and she returned his stare defiantly. "So now you're thinking it might be a good idea to introduce me to Mister Stake, once you've finished your own business? I've got news for ya, Bucky: we may, for the first time, actually agree on something."

"I'll do it if it has to be done," he said, working not to give way to his own anger. "But I can't see why we have to thrash all that out just now. We came out because you wanted diversion. So, divert yourself. I'm footing the bill, might as well at least get my money's worth."

Allie glanced around, and her smile hardened. "You're right," she said. "Get over here and kiss me."

Will had seen that glitter in her eyes before, and knew it portended nothing good. "Be serious," he said to her. "Even if I were willing to make the public spectacle you clearly intend, do you honestly believe you could rouse me to anything more than vague twitchings just now —?"

Her hands slid into his hair and she pulled his face to hers, clamping their mouths together with a force that pinched his lips against his teeth; then she moved to him, straddling him over the chair, and turned her head just enough to murmur into his ear, "Shut. The fuck. Up.", before returning to the seeming attempt to swallow his entire face.

She might not be capable of assaulting him directly, but Will began to fear he was in genuine danger of suffocating. At last she withdrew, and as he pulled in a few welcome breaths she swiveled on his lap and made a beckoning motion in the direction of the bar. One of the people there separated from the rest and moved toward them: a petite female with short, purple-streaked hair, wearing low-cut spandex pants and a bandeau that covered her breasts but showed a stunning expanse of midriff and navel. She stopped at their table, looking down at them with dancing eyes and a quirk of a smile, and said, _"Ja?"_

"Hiya, Hot Chick With Tube Top," Allie said cheerily. "Spreshun sha English-ee?"

She nodded, watching as Allie ran a hand inside Will's shirt. "You are Americans?"

"Me, yeah," Allie said. "Charlie here is Irish. He was just telling me about this place he's staying, offered to take me there for a drink." She wriggled on his lap, grinned up at the other woman. "And I'm saying, _Sure, I got a thirst you wouldn't believe,_ and then I see you over by the bar, and all of a sudden I'm thinking how yummy it would be if the two of us went sharesies on him."

"This is very generous of you." Will was struggling not to show how flummoxed he was, and the newcomer seemed to find that amusing. "But do you believe he has enough … vigor, to satisfy the both of us?"

"I kinda think he's got hidden depths." Allie caressed his cheek, gave it a tweak. "So I'd say the real question is, does he have enough nerve?"

Will drew a cautious breath. "I'm game," he said. "I just hope I don't disappoint you ladies."

There were enclosed stairs leading down to the street. Will went first, the two women following and smiling at one another. As they reached the bottom, Allie said, "D'you have a name, Hot Chick With Tube Top?"

"Yes." She slid a hand into the back pocket of Allie's jeans, smugly watching Will's reaction. "I am Grete."

"Happy to meetcha, Grete." Without looking his way, Allie held out a hand to Will. "And, oh — love the mountains."

Will dropped a stake into Allie's hand, and Grete was dust before she had time to understand. "I trusted you to know what you were doing," Will said into the sudden empty space between them, "but how could you be so sure?"

"It's an undead thing," Allie told him. "Same way she knew about me, or thought she did. I spotted her just as she was settling on her appetizer for tonight."

"And elected to draw her away." He nodded approval. "Neatly done."

"Team effort. You give good bait. I almost cracked up when you said, 'I'm game,' like you didn't know that was exactly the way she saw you." The sidelong glance was sardonic. "Or did you maybe think I was really setting you up for a double-header?"

"It would never occur to me that you could be so thoughtful," he said. "Or that you might possibly credit me with the ability to meet such a challenge."

"Right on both counts." Allie laughed. "You're getting to know me pretty well."

_I used to believe I did,_ he might have allowed himself to think. _Now I wonder._ But to do that, he would have had to ask penetrating questions of himself; and those, he was unready to face.


	3. Part 3

Part III

At the techno club where Gutrick was expected to appear, Allie wanted to wait outside, and Will had to argue his reasons. Disagreement between them was common, but Allie was seldom so passionate in pursuing a point, and Will found himself attempting to convince her when he could have simply compelled obedience. "Crowds are cover," he explained to her for the third time. "We can use them for camouflage while we watch for him."

"Cover works both ways," Allie objected. "Crowds mean it's as hard for us to spot him as it is for him to see us. Outside, we can watch from a hidey-hole, and take him down away from witnesses."

"He's the last one," Will said. "Witnesses don't matter. And there are three entrances, we'd have to separate to monitor the lines of approach." He frowned at her. "Normally you'd insist on being in the thick of the people and the music. Are you just being contrary, pushing the opposite of whatever I want?"

"I …" Allie bit her lip. "I don't know. It's just, we've been taking it all one step at a time, right? I mean, you always knew what the last act would be but meanwhile we've done whatever we had to do to get there. Well, this is it, curtain time. We could wrap it all up tonight … or it could all fall apart, right here, right now, just when we've almost got it won." She laughed briefly, but it wasn't the usual derisive bark. "I don't know if I'm choking at the goal line, or if I've actually got a vibe, but the thought of going in there is really making me twitch."

Enough. "This is the finish," Will said. "I'm not going to back away because you've got performance anxiety. I've heard you out, but the decision is mine. Let's go."

The interior was loud, dimly lit but punctuated by strobes, and with perhaps a quarter of the population density that might have been seen on a weekend night. The music was recorded rather than live, but horrendously amplified to compensate, the lyrics so distorted by the volume that it couldn't be immediately determined if they were being belted out in German or English. Will led the way to an upper level from which they could survey the majority of the floor area below, while anyone looking their way would have to squint to see up past the glare of a bank of colored lights. He gave Allie an expressive _You see?_ tilt of head and eyebrow, and they settled in to watch.

Even with the noise and movement below them, it wouldn't be difficult to pick out Gutrick when he arrived. He wasn't visibly old enough to seem out of place among the other patrons, but his facial structure was gaunt and distinctive, and he affected a style of dress that might have been trendy in the mid-1980s but looked stodgy in comparison to current styles. Until recently he had made it work for him, surrounding himself with younger, flashier minions, among whom his relatively conservative apparel gave him the appearance of an authority figure.

This approach had been severely compromised by the events of the last several months. An open assault would have been far too chancy, so Will and Allie had carried out an attrition campaign. One killed in Cheriton, as an opening sally and to assess their new teamwork; three in Marseilles a few weeks later, though only two of those had been among Will's original targets; more as they could manage them, one or two at a time, trying never to let the quarry gain a clear understanding of what was thinning their ranks.

At one point Gutrick's flock had numbered close to a dozen. Though he had acquired a few replacements in the interim, for the past month he had been reduced to no more than three or four hangers-on, and Gutrick was now the only remaining survivor of the original seven.

The count had been down to three of the seven when the Council muddied the waters by suddenly launching a hunt of its own: not for Gutrick's band, but for the implacable duo stalking it. One of the targets had gained weeks of added existence when his scheduled termination had been pre-empted by an ambush at the Belgian border; all of Allie's indoctrination, and all Will's shouted injunctions, had been barely sufficient to prevent her killing any of the field team that sprang the trap, and even so there were probably some who would never again be fit. It had been an unwelcome if not unanticipated complication; worse than the brief reprieve gained by Gutrick's followers, however, was that those being hunted now knew the threat against them, as demon networks across Europe were hit by requests for information about the outlaw Watcher and his vampire pet.

It had been inevitable; family connections could shield him only so far. It had cost him momentum, though, just at the point when he might have been able to wrap up the whole affair in short order. Moreover, his relations with Allie, contentious already, had taken a decidedly darker turn. In fact, it was when they had at last gone to ground, following the ambush, that Allie had hurled him into bed for the first time, a development unforeseen by either of them, and from which he had needed most of the next day to recover …

"Target lock," Allie announced, and pointed.

Yes, it was Gutrick, coming into view a dozen feet from the primary entrance, and Will was gladdened to see that the former _bon vivant_ had only two underlings in attendance. He must have been plagued by desertions, for the most recent strike — ten days ago — had still left him with four. As Will watched, the three of them proceeded to the back of the establishment, and were lost from sight. "One of the private rooms," Will said. "Our information was accurate."

"Spin up the Mystery Machine, Shaggy," Allie said, moving away from the railing. "It's time for us to bag that villain."

Will stared at her. "What?"

Allie shook her head in mock reproof. "That's the problem with you Masterpiece Theater types, you don't appreciate _real_ culture."

He thrust back the temptation to let himself be sucked into debate; that way lay madness. "Gutrick is the only one who matters," he told her as they started down the stairway from the loft. "Kill any that get between us and him, but don't let them distract you. This is what it's all been for."

Allie shot him a peevish look. "Hey, do I tell you how to starch your boxers? I don't need any armchair quarterbacking, I'll whack the sucker just to get you to shut up about it. You concentrate on not being minion-chow, and leave the rest to me."

This last came as they reached the lower level; they were about to start for the room that held Gutrick when a face leapt out at him from the main doors, and in that instant Will spun to put his back to the entrance, shoving Allie ahead of him. "Oh, _bollocks,"_ he said.

"What?" She went where he was pushing her, but he could feel her fighting the impulse to look back. "What is it?"

"Watchers," he told her. "Covering the front. Christ, why did they have to find us now? Even ten more minutes —!"

Allie stopped at a door set under the stairs and tried the knob. Locked. She set her mouth in a line and gave the knob a hard yank. Something snapped, and a moment later they were inside, pulling the door mostly closed but leaving a slit through which they could see. This was a janitor's closet, stocked with brooms and mop buckets and paper towels and cleaning supplies — including some that should _never_ be stored together, you'd think the bloody Germans, at least, could keep such things straight! — and Allie said, "Me think this smell fishy, Kemosabe. Your snitch musta decided he could sell you out just as easy as he could Gutrick. I ask you, what's the world coming to when you can't even trust a demon stoolie?"

"It couldn't have come at a worse time, either." Will clenched his fists. "If Gutrick learns we were here, that we came this close … He'll change continents, hug the earth as close as he can, it could take us years to track him again."

"So let's don't give him the chance." Allie held his gaze, fierce-eyed but calm. "This is your holy mission, boss-man, so it's your call … but I'm tellin' ya, we can still make this happen if we just put the pedal to the metal and blow straight through."

It was horribly tempting, but, "No," Will said. "They're too close, they might break in on us just as we reach Gutrick, and he escape while we're dealing with two sets of foes at once. We can't take that risk."

"Then think of something," she insisted. "I'm the muscle here, you're the brains, so do your freakin' _job,_ already!"

Will peered through the slit in the door, mind working furiously. This sudden turn had thrown him off focus, and it didn't help that the chemical smell in the enclosed space was threatening to make him ill. "I don't believe they truly know what you look like," he said at last. "They'll be watching for me, or for the two of us together."

"We split up," Allie said, understanding.

"Right. I'll move over to the bar, draw their attention, and you go after Gutrick. As long as you don't attract notice, you should be able to pass them unchallenged."

"Got it," Allie said. "If he gets away, I'll meet you back at our room, we'll figure out what to do next. If I kill him …" The huge, careless grin spread across her face. "I'll still meet you there, and bang your brains out by way of celebration. So, any parting instructions before I run to make the crazy?"

"Yes," he told her. "Go do your bloody job."

"That's my bastard," she said. She kissed him hard, and slid out the door.

He waited a few seconds, and then emerged as well, taking a deliberate path toward the bar. Allie, he saw, was moving nonchalantly through the club's other patrons, no hasty motions to draw the eye, and as he watched from the edge of his vision, she reached the short hallway that led to the private rooms in back. Right, then. His task, now, was to occupy their pursuers until she could complete hers.

The man he had seen at the door crossed the main interior to intercept him: Roger Wyndham-Pryce, he must have come out of retirement just for these festivities. The other two stayed at the door, Will only recognized one but the second matched him in body language and general manner of dress; they followed his progress with their eyes, but held their stations. Good, with the spotlight on him, Allie could act unhindered.

He and Wyndham-Pryce met at a table just short of the bar, and the senior man began to speak in precise, formal tones, voice raised to make itself heard over the music: "William Randall Giles, you are hereby bound into custody by order of the Council of Watchers, on charges of —"

"Put a sock in it, Windy." Will settled into a chair and relaxed into the easy, slangy speech of his Manchester days. "I can't believe they sent _you_ after me; scraping the bottom of the barrel, they are, I should be insulted."

Wyndham-Pryce's expression didn't change; it was as if he had expected the response, and been confirmed in his pessimistic opinion. "Neither commonness nor flippancy serves to alter the seriousness of your offenses," he said. Glancing back toward the men at the front, he nodded; one of them spoke briefly into a hand-held radio, and then Wyndham-Pryce turned back to Will and went on. "You deserved, and received, sympathy for the tragedy that befell you, but there can be no excuse for your systematic violation of the oaths you swore."

"Means to an end, Windy." Will's eyes were on the men at the doors, and he began to feel a trace of unease. They should have been scouring the place for sight of Allie, but they seemed content to maintain their position. "I played by your rules, and believed in 'em, but when it came to the chop …"

He stopped, gaping, and surged to his feet. Someone was approaching the men at the main entrance, and it was Gutrick. Will made as if to go for him, but Wyndham-Pryce's hand on his elbow checked him for a moment, and in plain fact it was too late already. The two men moved aside; Gutrick paused at the doors, looking around until he saw Will; a thin, triumphant smile creased the harsh-planed features, and then he stepped through the doorway and vanished.

Will was paralyzed for interminable seconds as fury warred with bewilderment. Then he turned back to Wyndham-Pryce, wrath gaining the advantage as comprehension dawned. "You let him go. No — no, you _arranged_ it with him." Staring at that forbidding, imperturbable face, it was all Will could do to keep his hands from the man's throat. "My father disowned me for colluding with a vampire; what do you think he'll say to the Council, when he learns you did the same thing?"

"Learn of it?" Wyndham-Pryce's reply was measured, assured. "It was Rupert who _suggested_ it." A spark of satisfaction glimmered in the older man's eyes as Will felt his face sag, and he went on remorselessly. "If you'll consider the matter, you'll see we had common cause with Gutrick. He feared the vampire with a soul, and we feared the vampire schooled by an apostate Watcher. It was in all our interests to see you stopped. Once that had been established, it was a simple matter to reach an agreement."

The revelations were coming too quickly for Will to keep pace with them, and he struggled to recover his balance. "If you know she has a soul," he said with fanatical calm, "then you know she's no threat to you."

"Do we?" Wyndham-Pryce said. "Your own recent activities have amply demonstrated that ensoulment is no guarantor of benign behavior …"

His voice rose on the last words as he attempted to hold the younger man's attention, but Will turned away from him, gaze sweeping the crowd of revelers, the sense of something dreadfully wrong expanding to crisis proportions. There had to be more than he was seeing, they would _know_ it would take more than three men to deal with Allie —

Then his eyes centered on a single figure, strolling languidly through the throng around her, and Will felt himself go cold. She moved with a tiger's liquid, deadly grace, and a strobe-shuttered glimpse of her face confirmed what he knew already. The second Slayer, the dark one, the renegade: offered amnesty, it would seem, in return for this urgent service …

Will had a good mind, capable of deep, incisive thought, but it was best suited for analytical consideration rather than for lightning decision. In the moment of seeing that sullied-angel face, however, he understood a number of very important things instantly and totally. Wyndham-Pryce's hand on his shoulder pulled him back around, and Will allowed the turn to begin the swing that buried the ice-axe in the senior Watcher's arm, the point biting into bone. Wyndham-Pryce screamed, and Will spun and sprinted through the stunned onlookers, weapon abandoned and victim already forgotten.

He didn't look back to see if the operatives from the doors had moved in pursuit of him; if not, they were of no consequence, and if so, he needed speed more than verification. He dashed toward the janitor's closet where he and Allie had temporarily hidden, his brain assessing a collection of related facts with icy, preternatural clarity.

Allie had gone down the hallway leading to the private rooms.

The Slayer was moving toward that same hallway.

Gutrick had come to the doors from an unexpected direction; he must have circled through connecting rooms in the back, moving behind cover so as to remain undetected.

Gutrick had been alone. He would have left his attendants behind, then, to occupy and delay Allie while the Slayer came upon her unawares from behind.

Allie couldn't beat a Slayer.

In the closet it took him only seconds to find what he had seen; he sacrificed additional precious seconds twisting off the caps and casting them away, then he was running for the hallway, a bottle in either hand. Bleach and ammonia, they should never be kept in the same storage space because inevitably some bloody fool would mix them, and that produced toxic chloramine gas. A Slayer was a dismayingly formidable killing organism, but all that power was housed in a human frame and the frame had to breathe, whereas Allie didn't. He'd pour the two bottles together at the door and then fling the concoction inside, maybe that would give her the edge she needed, _if_ he wasn't too late already, and he was in the hallway now and with all the desperate, frantic fear that possessed him he screamed, _**"Alexandra —!"**_

Someone appeared in front of him, an unremarkable man in an ordinary black suit and tie. The stranger held up his hand, and in a mild voice he said to Will, "No, don't interfere, sir. This is what you asked for. This is how it has to be done."

~ – ~ – ~

There was no threat in the man's manner, and he certainly didn't appear to offer any physical challenge, but Will found that he had stopped. "Please," he said. "I have to get to her."

"I understand your feelings, sir, and they do you credit. But this is a process, begun at your request, and must continue to its own ends."

Why was he standing here? Why hadn't the Watcher agents caught up to him? What had happened to the blaring synthesized music? "She'll die," Will protested.

"Yes, sir. That is the process."

"I don't understand … and, and, and I don't care. You have to let me help her!"

"Oh, I truly don't." The man tilted his head to study Will with some interest. "However, I would suggest, sir, that you ask yourself why the matter so concerns you. Your companion was simply a tool by which you could achieve certain goals, is this not so? Well, then, sir, that function has been fulfilled. If you will simply await the natural resolution of events which — if you will pardon me, sir — you yourself set in motion, then all you sought will be yours. You need only allow it to occur."

There was no effort, no force being exerted against him, but Will felt that he was engaged in a titanic struggle. Sweat ran down his face as he fought something he couldn't even feel. "I can't," he gasped. "I can't. Let me go to her, _please."_

The man regarded him with doubt and disapproval. "The creature is so important to you?"

"She's everything to me." His own words astonished him; he was almost weeping now. "Oh, God!"

The man drew himself up, seeming to grow taller and more imposing, and a lambent glow appeared behind his eyes. "Very well," he said, and his voice, too, had deepened. "You are released."

Power tore through Will with hurricane force, he jerked and cried out as everything in him was scoured as if with supersonic sleet, his nerves scraped raw and his very identity peeled away, he couldn't see, he couldn't think, he … he … he …

He straightened to glare at the man before him, his face taut with menace. "What the bloody hell is this?" he spat. "What are you tryin' to pull on me, you dozy little ponce?"

"You are being given what you came seeking," the man said. He still spoke cordially, but his tone no longer held even the semblance of apology. "This is merely the way in which it is being done."

"That's bloody bollocks!" Spike favored the other with a razor-honed sneer. "You been muckin' about in my brain, dizzyin' me up for jollies. D'you really think I'd let you lot take 'er from me …?"

He faltered in sudden confusion. "Take her? Take who?" the other man said into the new silence. "Yes, you begin to understand. You came here to win a soul. You agreed to submit to trials. These trials, however, always involve the testing of something that you yourself lack." He shook his head slowly. "You could not succeed; by the terms of trial, you were unfit before you began. Yet there was an … asymmetry, in condemning you for the absence of that which you had come to acquire."

"That's all piss to me," Spike blustered. "Why can't you mystical hoo-hoos ever spell it out to where a bloke can understand you?"

"Your will has been tested," the black-suited man said. "Your resourcefulness. Your determination. But how could we test those attributes which exist only in the company of a soul, when your very reason for coming here was that you _lacked_ a soul? The trial required it … and so, one was borrowed."

"Fancy that." Spike patted himself for a cigarette, but of course those had gone when he stripped for the first combat. "So the whole soddin' business was an illusion, was it? Pity; she had some gumption, for an imaginary bird —" He bit off the words as, within his readjusting brain, a number of cues came together. "Oh, bloody _hell,"_ he whispered.

"It was the arena for the last trial," the man said patiently. "And it provided also the framework for the granting of your prize. The body was vulnerable, magick-stricken in a way that offered an uncommon opportunity. That put the soul within a space that we could control … and so the soul is to be harvested and reshaped, and will become yours."

Spike shook his head, trying to rattle his jumbled thoughts into some kind of order. "I … Will thought she was sharin' _his_ soul. But all the time …"

"It was you who required an external provider, yes. Within the arena, you and she — She? He? Material entities can be tiresomely insistent on distinctions easily mutable — took on aspects of one another's natures. Neutered vampire, ineffectual human, none of it signifies. He/she was accessible on a psychic plane, and was already linked to you, and so we made use of that. Given the attributes afforded by a soul, you chose to place another's welfare before your own wishes. Sickening, but those are the terms of trial. You have won, Dark Warrior, and you shall have your prize."

Spike frowned. "So what'll happen to 'im?"

"He will die," was the indifferent answer. "He came within our reach because he flung his own body into the path of harsh magicks. He acted selflessly, to save the world, and the world will reward him with oblivion. Such is ever the fate of heroes. What is it to you?"

Nothing, if he wanted to be honest with himself, and yet Spike hesitated. Allie — Alexandra Harris — had shown a rare fire; he'd never seen the like in the whelp himself, but it hadn't come out o' nowhere, now, had it? A huge bleeding sideshow, but within that sideshow she'd loved him and been ready to die for him, he knew that to his core. So Will had been a sniveling tosser, and Allie more the loser for being devoted to such a sad-sack; still, it didn't seem right to punish someone for the same thing that had won him _his_ reward …

The black-suited man swelled and darkened, the light behind his eyes flaring green, and the illusory hallway faded into dimness. The looming figure stretched out a hand toward Spike, and in a voice like rock-plates grating together, it intoned, "Your prize awaits. Prepare to receive it."

Spike struck the hand aside, and roared, "Hoy! Do I look full daft to you? I meet all your trials, and you try to fob me off with a hand-me-down from _that_ pathetic wanker? Well, you can go bugger yourself sideways, you slag-faced pillock! I want my _own_ soul back!"

The glow of the eyes had grown until little else could be seen, and the voice below them rumbled, "This is your decision?"

Spike scoffed. "Too bloody right it is."

"There will be a price," the other warned.

"Always is," Spike said derisively. "Buck to it, will ya? Got people to see."


	4. epilogue

epilogue

The rest of the story is already known, but only those parts of the story that remain. The testing ground was wiped away, and Will and Allie ceased to exist even in memory. Their lives had been vivid, if abbreviated, but now were banished to the realm of never-had-been. Even so, three consequences of their brief span lingered, after that span had been consigned to the vast unknown.

First and most obviously, the dark warrior received the reward promised him, and found the price to be, indeed, steep beyond his expectation. He returned to the Valley of the Sun, and found his lost love and lost her all over again, and fought his last battle — only to discover it wasn't the last after all — and went on to severely annoy many people for quite some time to come.

Second, the white knight who had so long condemned himself for his abandonment of the woman who loved him, found that he had reached an unexpected peace with himself. In some way he couldn't quite understand, it was as if he had paid a penance, set the scales level, and shown that he could, in fact, commit his heart without reservation. This made no sense to him, but he accepted it and put it to beneficial use.

(He also found himself with a new, intuitive understanding of the mysteries of the female orgasm, an awareness that would subsequently move more than one grateful woman to rapturous astonishment; but of this, more need not be said.)

Third, least significant but much noted: months after the forgotten trial, a puzzled young woman would exclaim in exasperation, "Is there anyone here that _hasn't_ slept together?"; and two men with long memory of (and ample reason for) hating one another, would find their eyes meeting in a furtive, quizzical glance, and then jerking quickly away.

They might — if they allowed themselves to think of it at all — wonder why they had done that.

But they would never know.

—

end


End file.
